Former University of Tennessee College of Law Dean Douglas A. Blaze recently received the Harold Love Outstanding Community Service Award from the Tennessee Higher Education Commission. Blaze serves as the director of UT Law’s Institute for Professional Leadership and serves as chair of the Tennessee Supreme Court Access to Justice Commission.

The city of Memphis will soon return over $2.38 million to more than 900 NBA players as part of a 2015 settlement in a suit challenging the city’s “jock tax.” The National Basketball Players Association sued the state over the tax and claimed some players paid more in the tax than what they earned from the games. The National Hockey League Players' Association also sued the state over the tax and settled in 2015 for $3.27 million. Read more from The Commercial Appeal. 

Shelby County Chancellor Jim Kyle last week recused himself from hearing a lawsuit filed by former Memphis City Court Clerk candidate Wanda Halbert related to the results of last year's election. Kyle's wife is a candidate in a contested election this year and the Shelby County Election Commission asked him to remove himself after he had a “run-in with the SCEC staff," the Commercial Appeal reports. Halbert filed a lawsuit in October after losing the City Court clerk race to Kay Robilio in a race where voting machine reports didn't match final tallies.

The Daily News Journal reports Rutherford County Sheriff Robert Arnold will remain in office despite being indicted last week on federal fraud charges. Residents have started an online petition to remove Arnold from office, but Arnold said that he has “no intentions of resigning.” Rutherford and two other men are accused of pocketing thousands of dollars off the sale of JailCigs to inmates. 

The Tennessee Bar Association will be closed Monday for the Memorial Day holiday. The TBA will reopen Tuesday at 8 a.m.  

Even the nation’s High Court is not immune to “gender dynamics” when it comes to men cutting off women, Mother Jones reports. Research on the legal blog Empirical SCOTUS revealed male justices are more likely to cut off their colleagues. The data also showed the court's two youngest female justices, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor, were the most likely to be interrupted. Justice Clarence Thomas never interrupted or got interrupted during this term’s oral arguments. 

WSMV reports Rutherford County Sheriff Robert Arnold, his former Chief Deputy of Administration and Finance and his uncle have been arrested on conspiracy and corruption charges. The men were indicted yesterday for pocketing thousands of dollars off the sale of e-cigarettes by JailCigs, a company owned by Arnold and his uncle, and destroying evidence. JailCigs was put in the Rutherford County jail with no competitive bidding. State lawmakers today called for Arnold to resign, The Tennessean reports. 

A Nevada judge earlier this week ordered his bailiff to handcuff a public defender in his courtroom in order to “teach her a lesson” for reportedly talking over him. The female attorney, who regularly appears in the judge’s courtroom, was arguing to keep her client out of jail. The attorney contends that she did nothing wrong, saying, “The court’s constitutional duty is to listen to arguments, not silence them.” Read more from the ABA Journal.  

“And as the (political) system collapses inward, some lower-court judges are having a terrific time,” an article in The Atlantic suggests. The author shares examples of politically-minded judges who have ruled on issues like immigration and healthcare at a time with an eight-person Supreme Court and a grid-locked Congress have not always been able to resolve disagreements or make policy. "It’s common to charge that Obama’s second term has been marked by executive overreach," the author writes. "History may record instead that these years’ true legacy is the smooth flow of power to politically minded judges and their legislative enablers."

Phyllis Randolph Frye, the first openly transgender judge in the nation, discusses her career as a Houston attorney and 40 years of activism in an article published in the ABA Journal. Frye, who worked as a civil engineer before attending law school on the GI Bill, also discusses “softening” her advocacy in the "post-Caitlin" age.